Burning numbers of t-unicyclic graphs

Abstract

Given a graph $G$, the burning number of $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ for which there are vertices $x_1, x_2,\ldots,x_k$ such that $(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_k)$ is a burning sequence of $G$. It has been shown that the graph burning problem is NP-complete, even for trees with maximum degree three, or linear forests. A $t$-unicyclic graph is a unicycle graph with exactly one vertex of degree greater than $2$. In this paper, we first present the bounds for the burning number of $t$-unicyclic graphs, and then use the burning numbers of linear forests with at most three components to determine the burning number of all $t$-unicyclic graphs for $t\le 2$.